City of Graveyards: The Demise of Jewish Newark

Jewish Press ^ | 3-24-10 | Jason Maoz

[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

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Of interest to anyone in the area, but typical of many early 19th century Jewish urban enclaves. Enjoyed the examples of liberal "do as I say" hypocracy, and the mention of the 60s riots, which drove merchants out of many inner city areas.

[Cicero]

This is about the Jews of Newark, but it was pretty much the same story with the Irish, the Italians, the Poles, and every other ethnic group that used to inhabit our inner cities.

All destroyed by the social experimenters and “urban renewal” instigators, who thought it would be a good idea to move blacks into these cities—displacing the original communities and eventually forcing them to flee for their lives.

[oyez]

Similar things are happening to other neighborhoods. Italians, Poles, Jews, Gentiles are all in the same boat.

[Snickersnee]

“Epitaph,” not “epithet.” But....

[SJackson]

This is about the Jews of Newark, but it was pretty much the same story with the Irish, the Italians, the Poles, and every other ethnic group that used to inhabit our inner cities.

Yes. And is some areas, the neighborhoods are "gentrifying" with the grandkids and great grandkids of those who left.

[SJackson]

Meant to include you in 6

[Clemenza]

Similar things are happening to other neighborhoods

You are about five decades too late in your comment. Without further immigration from the mother country to sustain them, the Euro-ethnic neighborhoods died off, some slowly (see South Philadelphia), some rapidly (see Irvington, NJ or much of Chicago's south side). As my father will tell you, after WWII, anyone who was upwardly mobile left the old neighborhoods, depressing property values, leaving behind only the old and the poor. In his case, new immigrants moved in.

The only reason certain nabes like Bensonhurst in Brooklyn remained Italian into the late 1980s was due to a wave of immigration that took place in the 1960s. Other "white ethnic" nabes that did not receive further immigration either "went black" or saw new immigrant groups come in from the late 50s/early 60s onward.

Of course, here in New York, new ethnic groups seem to move in every ten years. Many older "white ethnic" enclaves have been gentrified by yuppies/hipsters, but only after said neighborhoods went through a period of "new ethnics" living there for a time.

[x]

The center of Jewish gravity at mid-century was the city's Weequahic section, made famous by native son Philip Roth, whose body of work reflects an ambivalence about Judaism and Jewish identity but none about the singular experience of growing up Jewish in Newark.

Technically, maybe. But you can read so much about Jewish Newark in Roth that you'll never want to hear another word about it ever again.

[hampdenkid]

I want to know when we are going to get reparations from those who moved in and destroyed our once-beautiful American cities. They owe us.

[Clemenza]

See my earlier comment. My parents lived in those "ethnic enclaves" (Dad in Newark, mom in Jersey City) you speak of. What really happened is that after WWII, many of the upwardly mobile moved to the suburbs, which depressed property values considerably, making it affordable for blacks and new immigrants to move in.

(Don't take anything Michael Jones says too seriously).

[Clemenza]

Yes. And is some areas, the neighborhoods are "gentrifying" with the grandkids and great grandkids of those who left.

Yep. See the Lower East Side, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Fort Greene, and (now) Bushwick (all in New York), Northern Liberties and Fishtown in Philadelphia, and basically every neighborhood in Boston outside of Mattapan or Roxbury.

[oyez]

It follows the theory of expending concentric circles. Where I live the central neighborhoods are about to be redeveloped or rezoned as light industrial. When I moved here in 1971 greater urban area extended eight miles from center . Now it extends about twenty two miles. Also the population density expands as well.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

All destroyed by the social experimenters and “urban renewal” instigators, who thought it would be a good idea to move blacks into these cities—displacing the original communities and eventually forcing them to flee for their lives.

You make it sound like blacks had no agency in this. The fact is that blacks moved to places like Newark because they'd left the south for industrial jobs in north. From 1940 to 1970, something like five million blacks left the south.

Where were they supposed to live?

[SJackson]

What really happened is that after WWII, many of the upwardly mobile moved to the suburbs, which depressed property values considerably, making it affordable for blacks and new immigrants to move in.

I'd include VA loans in that equation, and developers in outlying areas who marketed developments to vets, and others who needed the financing they could arrange.

[Clemenza]

Newark (my dad's hometown) was broke during the depression and WWII, which led it to accept more Federal Housing money than any other city in America on a per capita basis, with scores of blocks razed in the central and west wards for public housing during that time, giving it the sobriquet "Brick City." In the 1940s, when the factories were turned over to defense, the blacks moved up en masse, only to lose many of these jobs when the whites came back from the war. They remained in the public housing, however, often dependent on the dole (most city jobs at the time being distributed via an extremely corrupt, mafia-connected and racist Democratic machine).

Another large factor was the one I mentioned earlier, which was the depression of housing values due to the first wave of emigration to suburbia in the 1950s.

[dennisw]

read it all...very good

[Snickersnee]

The example of Hartford in this regard may be seen in other cities in the Northeast/Rust Belt: the Jewish North End of Hartford was the first in the city to "go black" in the 1940s-1950s, and it was because Jews had no inherent strictures re renting and selling properties to blacks. Other ethnic groups in Hartford, Italians, Poles, Quebeckers, etc., would make life very uncomfortable for anyone who rented or sold to a black family.

[appeal2]

Newark was a gem of a city. Small, we laid out, excellent highways in and out, a subway, rail links to NY and the Eastcoast. A nearby airport, a world-class seaport, and the Path train, a/k/a The Tube, which could take you to New York City, Jersey City and Hoboken for just 25 cents.

One major factor in Newark’s decline was the automobile. Once this form of transportation took over after WWII, any Jew with some savings moved out to one of the newer suburbs. There they could get 1/4 to multi acres, good schools and a sense of serenity and security that Newark stopped offering.

My mother went to Weequahic High, class of 1942, then considered the best high school in the state. This was a class of type “A” over achievers. They were part of the greatest generation and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

[rogue yam]

But that relatively idyllic state of affairs could not survive the contrasting fortunes of an upwardly mobile Jewish community and a black populace struggling, mostly unsuccessfully, to overcome poverty, prejudice and a series of ill-advised government policies.

Funny that this sentence is really what the whole article led up to yet there is no actual description of these "ill-advised government policies".